


When Sleep and Less Collide (Re: How the Potato Caused the French Revolution)

by sevenisles



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-07
Updated: 2006-11-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:11:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenisles/pseuds/sevenisles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose can't sleep, and the Doctor explains the historical significance of the potato.<br/><i>She remains sprawled, unmoving, for what seems like hours before lifting herself into a sitting position. Elbows on bent knees, she rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands, the pressure causing explosions of color to appear and then fade behind her eyelids.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	When Sleep and Less Collide (Re: How the Potato Caused the French Revolution)

\- 

Mickey had jumped ship nearly three nights ago and she still can’t sleep. At least, she assumes it was three nights, because everything about time becomes skewed when you travel through it, and the vacillations always leave her wondering.

Sometimes she’ll ask the Doctor the exact time, because she does ponder these things, and he’ll simply look upwards, tap his fingers against his hip and then reply with something like, “Oh, you’ll be hungry in about an hour, I reckon. How about catching a meal on Alephian?”

And later, in what she assumes to be an hour, her stomach will grumble and he’ll look towards her with a smug expression and begin setting coordinates.

This does not, however, change the fact that a small hum is radiating from somewhere within her room as she lays, motionless, across her bed, staring at the lazy patterns of the TARDIS’ ceiling.

_This is ridiculous_ , she thinks. She squeezes her eyes shut, willing them to stop straining and just relax for heaven’s sake. She sighs as they flutter open again, stubbornly refusing to allow her some rest. Her leg tingles, a small prickling sensation, and she shifts it to the left, straightening the slight bend of her knee. She remains sprawled, unmoving, for what seems like hours before lifting herself into a sitting position. Elbows on bent knees, she rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands, the pressure causing explosions of color to appear and then fade behind her eyelids.

_Tea_ , Rose thinks. _That’ll set me straight._

She swings her legs over the side of her bed with a sigh, sliding off the mattress as her toes skim the ground’s surface. The floor is cool under her bare feet when she stands, and she lifts both arms in the air, stretching the muscles in her back and lengthening her torso while a yawn fights to escape her lips. The shirt she’s wearing is twice her size and proudly bears the faded image of Snoopy, proclaiming that she’s too cool for school, and it’s hem stops an inch or two above her knees.

She idly wonders if she should maybe pull on some trousers in case she runs into the Doctor on the way. _He’s probably sleeping_ , she thinks, and decides she’s much too lazy to dig through her closet anyway. She makes her way to the door, stepping over a nearly ruined set of running shoes, and opens it a small crack. Light seeps into the room, and she blinks rapidly, eyes focusing and readjusting to the hallway’s illumination. She steps out of her room and shuts the door gently behind her, cringing a bit when the hinge gives a small creak of compliance.

It’s a short walk to the kitchen, just a few doors down and somewhere to the left, and Rose mentally ticks off each of the entrances as she passes them. _Bathroom, storage, library, locked, sometimes-garden-sometimes-laundry-room, kitchen._ She notices a bright light streaming from the open doorway and slows her gait as she approaches.

_TARDIS probably knew I was coming_ , she guesses.

Stepping into the frame of the door, she squints as the light hits her eyes. She hears a soft rustle of clothing from behind a cabinet door and can see the Doctor, in his usual pinstripe suit, reaching for something from within its depths.

Rose watches him pull out a metal can that could possibly hold something akin to soup. _Or shampoo_ , she thinks. She never knows with the Doctor, especially since he nearly ate a bowl of yogurt with an unhealthy dose of her conditioner mixed in for breakfast. He claimed innocence, of course, insisting that the TARDIS moved it into one of the kitchen’s cooling shelves, and it’s entirely not at all his fault if the old girl gets a bit confused when it comes to foreign objects, and what do humans think they’re doing, anyway, naming things that in no way, shape, or form resemble soaps something like _“Strawberry Blast; now with an infusion of papaya!”_ \- accompanied by very tasty-looking descriptions when you can’t even eat it? Not even a little?

And, Rose remembers, that was only slightly before the unfortunate incident of him mistaking a rather plain looking can of shaving cream for a popular 2046 model of a fire extinguisher— _They were all the rage, I’m telling you! People went around lighting things on fire just to use them!_ —and confidently threw it at the TARDIS console. The TARDIS wasn’t particularly happy with that episode, and for several days afterwards the Doctor kept finding himself in a room filled with a substance that tasted, peculiarly, like shaving cream.

Rose never asked how he knew what shaving cream tasted like, mostly because she couldn’t be quite sure that Time Lords didn’t just eat things like shaving cream for supper all the time, and thus didn’t find it difficult to restrain an urge to inquire why he would even be eating strange foaming liquids occupying rooms of the TARDIS. At any rate, she kept close tabs on her toiletries after that.

Still holding the might-possibly-be-soup can, the Doctor pulls his glasses from some sort of pocket and pushes them onto the bridge of his nose, glaring at the can suspiciously, and then licking it twice. _Odd affinity for licking things, this one,_ she thinks with a bemused smile. Apparently satisfied, the Doctor places the can back into the cupboard, stretching so far within it that she can only see the lower half of his body.

Rose steps all the way into the kitchen and begins making her way to where some apparently amazing herbal tea is stored— _Perfect if you need a bit of shut-eye_ , the Doctor once told her (though he continued with, _The Qha’safians actually tried perfecting an already existing recipe by adding mint and their slightly larger version of a potato, and it turned out to be a rather nasty concoction. Got it right in the end, though_.) —when the Doctor stills quite suddenly, all previous movements and reachings completely halted.

He stays like that for several minutes, and Rose continues staring at the motionless bottom half of his body, wondering what on earth he was waiting for. Her eyebrow arches as she opens her mouth, and just as a question about his behavior is going to slip past her lips, she completely fails to notice a rather large, speeding blur hurtling towards her. A sharp intake of breath replaces her question as something hits her on the side of the head with a healthy _thwop_.

“ _Ow!_ What’d you do that for?” Her voice was overpowering in the silence of the normally kind atmosphere of the TARDIS kitchen.

The Doctor pulls himself out of the cupboard quickly, and with a startled face sporting crooked glasses he questions her existence. “ _Rose?_ Rose, what are you doing in here? Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“Easy for you to say!” Rose answers, rubbing her head with vigor. “I couldn’t sleep, so I came in here to make some of that, whatsit called, _potato_ tea, and I get hit in the head with..” she trails off as she looks down at the offending object, resting peacefully on the kitchen floor. “A spatula?”

“Spat-what?”

“Spatula. You hit me with a _spatula_? Are you kidding me?”

“Well,” he says defensively, “how could I have possibly known it was you?”

“Doctor,” she says rather slowly with a voice that is almost almost _almost_ bordering on irritation, “who else would it be? Far as I know, we’re the only two things on this ship that might run into each other more than once.” She’s still rubbing her head, more slowly than she was before, and the Doctor looks at a bit of a loss.

“Well,” he says again, “it could’ve been that Jnagorian man-eating plant. I keep finding it in the storage room, ever since that bit of falling cliff hit the TARDIS.”

Rose’s eyebrows raise slightly. _Brilliant_ , she thinks. _That’s definitely something I could’ve been better off not knowing about._ She begins to entertain the notion of how she could leave her room up in arms, and subconsciously decides that an umbrella isn’t her best bet for dueling one of the Doctor’s temperamental vegetables. She almost asks him why he has a man-eating plant on board, but decides to save it for a time when things aren’t being thrown at her and when her head doesn’t throb as much.

She’s about to ask him where the Qu.. The Kwasf.. _where everything is stored_ when the Doctor insists that she just sit down at the table while he makes her the tea, and that he’s really very glad that she isn’t a plant that eats people, because he’s just now recalling that kitchen tools can be an excellent way to declare war, and he can’t go about having a war in his own ship, now can he? Rose is only half-listening to him go on about the Jnagorian planet’s plant prisons and how he challenges her to say that three times as fast since it’s a rather delightful mouthful. She decidedly doesn’t try saying it three times as fast, and instead rests her chin on crossed arms that are currently lying carefully on the table’s surface.

The Doctor is still all energy, and Rose’s eyes follow him as he walks to and fro in the kitchen; from cupboard, to shelves, to counter, to strange-mixing-bowl-strainer-thing, and back again to counter top. He seems to be preparing the Qha’safian ( _I wonder how that’s spelled_ , she thinks, then quickly dismisses the thought of even trying) ingredients and Rose finds that she’s incredibly glad that the Doctor is making it instead of her, because there are so many more ingredients and processes than any tea is entitled to have. She watches him sprinkle in some reddish powder, and, apparently finished, he stirs it in four times clockwise and twice counter-clockwise with a brightly colored spoon.

Rose lifts her head when he places a steaming cup of what she supposes is the tea in front of her. Her hands wrap around the mug as she pulls it closer, enjoying the warmth that’s seeping into her hands. The Doctor sits himself in the chair opposite her and she notices that his hair is a disaster, sticking up however it wishes, and that he’s got a bit of red something-rather smeared right above his left eyebrow. He realizes she’s looking at him with something that might be curiosity and might be amusement and decides to say, “What?”

She doesn’t tell him about the red on his face. “Thanks. For the tea, I mean,” she clarifies, “Not for throwing kitchen utensils at me.”

Rose inhales the warm curling tendrils of steam slowly rising from the cup. Its almost spicy, a harder version of cinnamon perhaps, and she smells something incredibly foreign tangled within the hot wisps; all citrus and tea leaves and dark swirling spices. The Doctor watches her intently as she lifts it in front of her mouth, hesitantly taking a sip of the alien drink. It isn’t as hot as she assumes it will be - heated enough to not be lukewarm but cool enough not to burn her mouth - and her tongue is instantly assaulted with a collection of sensations; the liquid is crisp and razor-sharp and continuously changing its consistency from smooth and flat to thick and rolling, like a peppery molasses. She’s almost sure that she can taste honey amidst a hint of lemon, the citrus undercurrent accenting something darker, richer, an unknown ingredient that seems to calm her immensely. She takes another sip, and then another, each taste bringing a small burst of flavors that she rolls her tongue around in before placing the cup back onto the table.

“So?” he questions, and it’s obvious that he’s on the edge of his seat waiting for her response because, Rose notices, his entire body is leaning precariously off, well, the edge of his seat.

“What?” she responds nonchalantly, quite sure that this sort of answer will most likely cause him to topple from his chair. She has tried this tactic often, this understated kind of response, and he hasn’t yet realized that she only does it to see his face explode with emotion.

“ _What?_ Is that all? No _‘Thank you Doctor for this amazing brew of ancient calming liquid’_ ? No _‘Goodness, the vestige of rest is already upon me, how on earth can I thank you’_ ? Nothing like that? I just get a.. _A What_?”

She waits another second before a grin spreads across her face and laughter flows effortlessly past her lips. For a moment she almost doubles over, crippled with mirth, when she glances again at his almost blank but thoroughly questioning face. It soon subsides into giggles, however, as she tries to regain control of herself and slowly the giggles transform into a broad, knowing smile. There’s a slight pause before his eyebrows raise, as if asking her what on earth she was going on about. He’s not sure if this sort of question is actually communicable through the use of eyebrows, so his lips part with a very bewildered, “What?”

Rose ignores the questions and says, “So, this was made from potatoes?”

Unsure about the turn of subject but accepting it as the strange workings of the female mind, the Doctor stares at the cup for a moment before saying, “Yes. Well, not quite. Exactly. Very much.”

She looks down at the tea again, her hands still curled perfectly around the cup. She brings her gaze back up to the Doctor and doesn’t say anything. He sighs, and his hand involuntarily reaches up towards his head as his fingers slide themselves through his already disastrous hair.

“It _started out_ with potatoes, yes, but it didn’t _end_ with them, exactly. Well, the recipe did, but it’s really very..” he sighs again, with exasperation coloring it this time, before just beginning again with, “Quite honestly they’re an odd sort of people, almost reminds me of you lot, actually,” Rose hmphs as he continues, “and the mechanics of their cooking defy most explanation. Mind you, I helped their head chef with the actual recipe, told him potatoes would be an awful choice, considering their sordid past, what with causing revolutions and the like, and thankfully he agreed. Can’t imagine the devastation a mistake like that would have caused. Would’ve tasted _awful_.”

Disbelief was written clearly across Rose’s face. For all intents and purposes, the word disbelief was scrawled in huge blocked-in letters over her features and could possibly be seen from eight or so kilometers away, though anything over ten would be seriously pushing it.

“Err.. The potato? Caused a revolution? What, did it refuse to be made into chips and pack it’s things?” The laugh that chased the questions from her mouth was one of, dare it be said, disbelief.

“It’s like I said, France is a different _planet_.”

Rose doesn’t respond immediately and instead raises the tea to her lips again, relishing the tastes across her tongue and the warm calm that reverberates through her chest after each swallow. She gently places it back onto the table and says, “France?”

“France,” he replies again, smugness slipping into his smile.

“What about them? They had a revolution because that one King Louis spent all their money and there was practically no food, not because they liked _chips_.”

“It was the sixteenth Louis, and it was because they _didn’t_ like chips.”

The Doctor sat back in his chair and crossed both arms upon his chest, as if daring her to challenge his logic. Which is mostly a silly thing to do, because Rose is always up for a challenge, and, she thinks, _Vegetables don’t go around overthrowing governments._ Even after visiting a (very respectable, in her opinion) number of planets and civilizations, the Doctor has never once mentioned anything along the lines of potatoes gaining the upper hand.

_Unless they can eat you_ , she mentally amends, silently recalling a certain man-devouring plant on board. She settles into her chair and mirrors the Doctor’s posture.

They’re both sitting in silence, staring at one another, and she imagines how they would look in one of those American western films, all squinting eyes and arching brows and fingers inching towards their weapons. The TARDIS kitchen is a less than thrilling place to hold a duel, though she’s quite sure it’s entirely more dangerous than outside a saloon in the middle of the desert.

Her fingers sway towards the imaginary gun belt on her hip with, “I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t believe me?” An eyebrow raises.

“Yeah, I don’t believe you. Are you going to repeat everything I say?” Her eyes squint.

The Doctor’s eyelids slowly move downwards until he thinks he’s squinting like one of the pro’s. If there were Olympics for squinting, he’s pretty certain he would be a gold medalist (maybe even a three-time winner, considering how well he does it), and even considers visiting Blaosk to test this theory out.

Rose thinks he might have something in his eye.

“Maybe,” he answers, re-opening his eyelids (his orbicularis muscles need a bit of strengthening if he’s going to be squinting for such a long while), and Rose just assumes he got the eyelash or whatever it was irritating him out of his eyes.

“Well we won’t get very far if you continue doing so.”

“Surely not.”

Rose un-crosses her arms and wraps her hands around the cup of tea once again. The Doctor does almost the same, though since he has no tea to occupy his hands, he instead leans forward to spread them across the wood of the table.

“Right,” he says. “French Revolution.”

“Earth, throughout it’s history, has had little tiny ice ages, where the temperature drops a few degrees,” he explains. “The fact of the matter is, even if it doesn’t seem like much, a few degrees has an enormous impact when it comes to your agriculture.”

To further explain to her, or perhaps because his hands weren’t terribly fond of remaining idle, the Doctor accompanies his speech with his arms outstretched, his hands curving to form what Rose assumes is a representation of the planet and the wiggling of his fingers as air currents. She drinks the tea as she listens, watching his motions, and for a moment or two her vision swims, apparently deciding to take a short holiday. It doesn’t take long for her world to right itself again, and her ears continue to pick up the rise and fall of the Doctor’s historical monologue.

“Now, the French were traditionalists. While everyone else was enjoying the amazing versatility of the potato, particularly the Irish you’ll find, the French just said _‘We’ll stick to our wheat, thanks. We don’t mind that we’ve had terrible crops and the masses are starving, we’d just like to stay with what we know.’_ Not their finest moment.”

Rose begins wondering if he enjoys the history of produce slightly more than he does the actual revolution, remembering in particular his unusual attachment to the banana. She continues sipping the tea regardless.

 

“Now, King Louis, the sixteenth that is, is an all right bloke. He’s perfectly fine eating your lumpy, odd-looking vegetable, and even tries to get some of the people to start eating it as well.”

The Doctor’s tone is becoming both entirely more serious and infinitely excitable, and he’s talking about the clergy and how they thought the potato was evil since they grow underground. His features blur, and she blinks, hard, to make her eyes focus properly on his face again. She feels cold suddenly, and brings the tea to her lips, intent on feeling the warmth that spreads through her system upon drinking, only to find the cup empty; a few shimmering leaves reflecting the white light of the kitchen.

She stares at the shape of them, the color oscillating between deep red and muted violet, and comes to the conclusion that the left crinkled leaf most resembles a Florlkian nose.

An uncertain “Rose?” reaches her ears. There’s a second or two of silence before she thinks, _Oh. I’m supposed to respond._

“Doctor,” she says. Her mouth seems to take its time forming the syllables, and she returns her attention to the Doctor. Her eyes relay that everything is in slow-motion, and Rose is almost certain that the air has become thicker, that simply moving is impossible and swimming might be the better idea.

“I don’t know if I like swimming,” she hears herself saying. The Doctor is grinning and his hands have returned to their splayed position on the table. _Too cheeky by a half_ , she mentally tells him.

He grins wider.

“I think, Rose Tyler, that you need some sleep.”

She responds by lying her head on the table. “Just another minute, please,” she replies slowly.

“Another minute of what?”

Rose can feel herself drifting off, and the will to move into a bed seems to have packed it’s belongings and left for an indefinite period of time.

She registers a far off squeak of the chair sliding against the floor, and a few seconds later can feel hands gripping her by the shoulders.

“C’mon you,” a voice says. “Off to bed.”

The Doctor lifts her off the chair, quickly placing an arm around both her shoulders and stoops to swing up her legs with the other. Rose’s arms are tucked against her chest, and the Doctor adjusts his footing to evenly distribute her weight for easier carrying.

Rose can feel herself moving and grips part of the Doctor’s jacket sleepily so she won’t slip from his grasp. She’s almost completely asleep when she hears his voice, vibrating from his chest, traveling from lungs to larynx to cool air.

“Rose?”

“Mmh?”

“I’m rather fond of this jacket.”

“Mmmhm?” She presses her face closer into his chest, absorbing the heat his body unknowingly provides. _Perhaps he really doubles as a space heater, and all the Time Lord business is just a cover-up. Like an oven. Or one of those kitchen things_. There’s a pause in her thoughts as she feels the grip around her tighten. _He’s a toaster!_ , she thinks idly.

The Doctor looks down at the nearly sleeping human in his arms, loosely clutching the fabric, and he can see a smile in the folds of the pinstripes. Her mouth falls open slightly, and her breath is warm against the cloth, seeping into his skin.

“Took me a good while to find, you know.” She presses her face deeper into his body, feeling the double beat resounding inside.

“Rose?” he says again.

He thinks she answers with a murmur or whisper of something.

“Try not to drool, okay?”

The only response he receives are small, even breaths.

“Right,” he sighs. He arrives at her door and looks down again. “Dream about the plains of Emii,” he tells her. “Dream about the skies of Ploria. Think about tea and chips and those ridiculous pair of socks you always wear when you think we’ll need the luck. Stop worrying me about the next time we can go shopping, and if I’m really making the right decisions.”

He steps inside her room, maneuvers around a pair of running shoes, and tucks her into the bed, pulling the covers firmly around her. “That last one is particularly irritating,” he tells her quietly. He stands watching her for a moment before slipping out the door and carefully closing it behind him.  
-


End file.
